Richard Sears | MIT Scientist

After a long career as a geophysicist and executive at Shell, Richard Sears currently holds a position as visiting scientist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Sears states that the world will never run out of oil. Not because it is infinite, but because new technologies and alternative energy such as solar, wind and unconventional hydrocarbons will take its place long before we ever have the chance to see the last drop of oil. We just have to wait and find out what technology will end the Age of Oil.

Ben Voorhorst | COO Tennet

Ben Voorhorst is chief operating officer at TenneT-transpower. TenneT is in charge of the highways of the Dutch electricity grid and a substantial part of Germany. Their focus is to develop a north-west European energy market and to integrate renewable energy. Voorhorst believes that grid extension is an essential precondition for substantive renewable energy integration from both decentralised and utility scale installations. Besides his position at TenneT, Voorhorst is member of the Executive Committee of the Netherlands Association for Energy Data Exchange and Member of the Supervisory Board at Energie Data Services Nederland.

Igor Kluin | Director Qurrent

Igor Kluin is founder and managing director of Qurrent renewable energy. Qurrent is the first energy company that don’t sell energy, but let people generate their own energy. Qurrent enables the use of local renewable energy, making their clients less dependent on polluting and increasingly expensive oil and gas. They believe that by practical application of technology, the general public can be enabled to generate a substantial amount of energy locally. Kluin also holds a position as vice-chairman at De Groene Zaak, an association of businesses that pool their knowledge and expertise in order to define a shorter path to a sustainable economy.

Nico Baken | Professor

Nico Baken is a senior strategist KPN and part-time professor at TU Delft with the Telecommunications Division, Department of Network Architectures and Services. He graduated as a mathematical engineer from the Technical University of Eindhoven, PhD at TU Delft in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in the discipline of integrated optics. Nico Baken has been responsible for KPN in the fibre-fication of 128 Dutch cities. He is the inventor of concepts such as the PC-plumber Transsectoral Innovation, Liquid Bandwidth, and Streetlight. His themes now are: personal networks, 4G Mobile, FTTH, the “Masterplan In Holland staat een huis” and cross-sectoral urban architecture. He has over 50 international papers and numerous patents to his name, also received several prizes for his work among others as the best researcher Dr. Neher Laboratory.

“We’ve embarked on the mobility revolution, and frankly there is no way back.”

Christina Lampe-Onnorud | CEO Boston-Power

Dr. Lampe-Onnerud is a well-known authority in the battery industry. She has pioneered the use of lithium-ion and energy storage solutions and systems to deliver more powerful, longer lasting, safer and cost-effective batteries for laptops, PDAs, cell phones and other electronic devices. Prior to founding Boston-Power, Dr. Lampe-Onnerud was partners at Arthur D. Little/TIAX, where she ran the company’s globally- renowned battery labs. Earlier in her career, she served as a director and senior scientist at Bell Communications Research. Awarded 40+ patents to date, Dr. Lampe-Onnerud has received a range of industry awards. These include: lifelong member of the Royal Academy, 2010 Sustainable Leadership Award100 Top Young Innovators by Technology Review and Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year for Clean Tech.

Bjørn Lomborg | Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre

As director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, a think-tank that tells governments and philanthropists about the best ways to spend aid and development money, Bjorn Lomborg became internationally known for his book Cool It. Lomborg argues that many of the actions now being considered to stop global warming, are based on emotional assumptions and may have little impact on the world’s temperature. Lomborg argues that we should focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting AIDS and assuring and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply – which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives.

“For smart design, a lot of it has to do with looking to the past and remembering how we designed before ”

Michelle Kaufmann | Architect

Michelle Kaufmann is an architect, designer, and advocate for smarter ways to design, build, and live. She is one of the first architects to make a persuasive case that prefab design was in a number of ways synonymous with sustainability. Her mission with all of her work is to make thoughtful, sustainable design accessible. With her firm, Michelle Kaufmann Studio, she specializes in sustainable lifestyle design. Kaufmann is a design and modular consultant to home owners, businesses, and developers, and is an adviser and consultant to Blu Homes.

Cees de Bont | Dean Industrial Design Engineering

At the Delft University of Technology Cees de Bont is heading the Delft Design and Engineering Initiative. He also chairs D-Incert (Dutch Innovation Centre for Electric Road Transport), a nationwide platform for electric mobility. D-incert is a network organization that connects scientific research, technological innovation and education with the transition to electric road transport in The Netherlands. The main activities of D-Incert are organizing network events and workshops for companies, universities and research institutes; knowledge brokering, opportunity recognition and project initiation; R&D and innovation roadmapping and longer term agenda setting in the Netherlands.

Martin Scheepers | Manager Intelligent Energy Grids ECN

Martin Scheepers is unit manager Efficiency & Infrastructure and program manager Intelligent Energy Grids at the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN). ECN develops high-level knowledge and technology for a sustainable energy system and transfers them to the market. The research programme Intelligent Energy Grids strives for the development of high-quality knowledge and technology in order to achieve reliable, sustainable and cost-effective energy grids that can accommodate a large share of intermittent and decentralized energy sources.

Peter Hermans | Program manager Stedin

As program manager at Stedin, Peter Hermans works at different programs in the energy sector, including smart metering and energy transition. Stedin provides safe and continuous transport of gas and electricity to more than two million customers in the Netherlands. In 2008 Stedin was the first grid operator in the Netherlands that introduced its own name and positioning. Looking into the future, Stedin wants to contribute to a sustainable energy supply. In a sustainable energy supply, they believe in consumer participation, also known as the ‘prosumer’.

“I think we will do upgrades to the overall system by changing it one small area at a time. ”

Catherine Mohr | Director Medical Research

As Director of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical, Catherine Mohr evaluates new technologies for incorporation into the next generation of surgical robots. In her free-time, Mohr and her husband has built a home, with keen attention to embodied energy. They used several energy efficient techniques such as a rainwater catchment tank, a passive solar foundation using fly ash to reduce the energy embodiment by 25% and rice straw bale for insulation. When finished, they used less then half of the typical embodied energie for building a house like this.

Marcel Peters | Innovation manager Essent

As innovation manager at Essent, Marcel Peters is Responsible for assessing innovative technologies applicable in end-use propositions. Essent (part of the RWE group) provides customers with gas, electricity, heat and energy services. They are leading producer and supplier of sustainable energy in the Netherlands. For new sustainable energy solutions, Essent has some areas of special interest. One of these is the HRe boiler. This kind of boiler produces heat and warm tap water but, at the same time, electricity as well.